December 30, 2013

American Hustle was third for the second straight day, with just under $6 million, and hitting the $60 million domestic mark. The Oscar hopeful is performing adequately, and has leveraged its great reviews and solid word-of-mouth into a decent run. This wasn't exactly fun time Christmas cinema, so a hold of this level is a decent win.

Anchorman 2 showed a bit of weakness across the Christmas weekend, falling to fourth place and $5.8 million on Sunday. One of the few films to show a drop over this weekend, it's still managed to match the domestic total of the original in just two weeks, which I find hard to find fault with. An Austin Powers like breakout might have been hoped for, but never materialized, and it should wind up with around $125 million domestic.

The top performer of the actual Christmas Day releases was fifth, which just shows how poor that slate did. The Wolf of Wall Street earned $5.4 million on Sunday to bring its running total to $34 million, which is perhaps two-thirds of what might have been hoped for with the pedigree of the actors and its director. I guess corporate greed just isn't what people are looking for over the holidays, go figure. Against a $100 million budget, this is a bit of a misfire, but Oscar attention could help this out a little.

Saving Mr. Banks was actually the best relative performer of the holidays, with a $4.25 million Sunday and a $14 million weekend. This still only got the film to $37 million domestic, but it's essentially gotten a new opening weekend, and could get to around $80 or 90 million when it's done. This is what leveraging against the Christmas week looks like when it's done properly.

What it definitely doesn't look like is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which was seventh on Sunday with just $3.7 million. Ben Stiller's Forrest Gump-lite failed to ignite over the holidays, and has only $25 million to show for itself in five days. I think we might be looking at just $70 million for it in total, and it has probably written itself completely out of the Oscar race.

There was a time when it wasn't a certainty that The Hunger Games: Catching Fire would hit the $400 million mark domestically despite its enormous opening weekend. That's been erased as of this Sunday, with $391 million total. In fact, that $400 million should happen by next weekend at this time, with an almost certain chance of passing the $408 million of the first installment. The franchise has grown, if ever so slightly, which bodes well for films 3 and 4.

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Thankfully for every other film out there this weekend, there's 47 Ronin to point at and laugh. Its ignominious debut finished with a $2.8 million Sunday and $20 million in five days, against a (depending on who you talk to) $175-225 million budget. And really, who wouldn't bet that much against a Keanu Reeves samurai movie with witches and ghosts? Outside the comfy confines of Christmas, this should drop like a stone – it had among the lowest Saturday increases and highest Sunday drops – and $40 million domestic might be the final total.

Entering the lower rungs of the box office, we have A Madea Christmas, which for a Tyler Perry movie, actually exhibited legs of a sort, only dropping 12%. With $43 million domestic and the purpose for it existing running out, this will still end up being one of the less profitable Tyler Perry movies – though still wildly profitable.

The idea of Grudge Match appeared to be as unsettling to the general public as it looked on paper, as the notion of seeing septuagenarians punch each other in the face only attracted $13 million of business over five days, and a dismal $2.1 million on Sunday. Career revivals will have to get only more desperate from here on.

Dinosaurs, kids and Christmas. How can you go wrong? Fox found a way, as Walking With Dinosaurs was flat over the Christmas weekend, and earned an even $2 million. With $20 million in the bank, even its $80 million budget seems enormous. Something something extinct soon.

Entering into the limited releases, we had Philomena continuing a strong run and getting to $16.5 million on Sunday, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom had an okay debut with $2.2 million and $750,000 on Sunday, while Biebermania may have been officially buried with just $544,000 on Sunday, and $4.2 million over five days, just 12% of Never Say Never's box office over the same time period.